Baruch History Department

FYI!

Yesterday, students from our History of Tourism class taught by @markricehistory.bsky.social organized a historical walking tour of Madison Sq. Park. Students researched and presented about various sites in and around the park - part of our department's commitment to experiential learning.

Congrats to Baruch history prof. @markricehistory.bsky.social. His work is published in the new series, Perú Global from the Fondo Editorial de la Universidad del Pacífico in Lima.

Truck supervisor Bernard Levey with his family in front of their home in the new Levittown, Pa., housing development in 1950. (Bernard Hoffman/Time Life/Getty Images)

Women's History Month spotlight: students in "Women and Gender during the Cold War" conduct research on relevant topics of their choice, focusing on methodologies of gender history. Learn about their research at Baruch's Reseach and Creative Inquiry Expo in May! blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/history/?p=336

Map titled, "Palestine, with the Hauran, and the adjacent districts," published by Charles Knight & Co in 1843.

Students in our Women and Gender in the Middle East course use @wikieducation.bsky.social to improve Wikipedia articles on relevant topics. Today's student profile is history major William Alex Wong, expanding an article on Women in Palestine. blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/history/?p=327 #WomensHistoryMonth

Dr. Brown giving a lecture on Black visual culture.

Dr. Brown meeting with Baruch history students

Thank you, Parsons School of Design prof. Dr. Jonathan Michael Square for presenting at the history department's Friedman Lecture on Tuesday. Dr. Square presented on how curators document and curate Black visual culture and later met with history students.

For Women's History Month, we're recognizing the excellent work of students in @zoegriffith.bsky.social's course Women & Gender in the Middle East, in which students edit Wikipedia pages on relevant topics. History major Amalia Parrish researchs Islamic clothing: blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/history/?p=323

Student (looking around the @baruchhistory.bsky.social reception area): This kinda looks like a doctor’s office

Me (barely hiding my joy at getting the perfect set up for dad joke of the week): Well, technically…

Books: Seine Kid - The Magazine Antiques Since 1922, The Magazine ANTIQUES has been America’s premier publication on the fine and decorative arts, architecture, preservation, and interior design.

Recently, the collaborate history, The Sweet Life: The Sweet Life: Julius Leblanc Stewart and Painting the Belle Époque featuring the work of Baruch history professor Vincent DiGirolamo, received a glowing review: www.themagazineantiques.com/article/book...

Tomorrow! Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, Asst. Prof. of Black Visual Culture at the Parsons School of Design will present "Looking Back to the Future: Realizing the Afric-American Picture Gallery"

Mar. 25, 12:45pm in NVC 5-165

Sponsored by the Department of History and the Robert A. Friedman Seminar

Great event hosted by @iehs.bsky.social event on the Page Act featuring Baruch history's @profbrooks.bsky.social!

We're excited to welcome Dr. Jonathan Michael Square, Asst Prof of Black Visual Culture at Parsons School of Design, to Baruch on Tues to give a public lecture, "Looking Back to the Future: Realizing the Afric-American Picture Gallery," 3/25 12:45pm in VC 5-165 baruch.event.cuny.edu/events/BxuT4...

Photograph of W.R. Grace

Article titled: Transnational Business and US Diplomacy in Late Nineteenth-Century South America: W.R. Grace & Co. and the Chilean Crises of 1891 by Mark Rice.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Did you know that NYC's first Irish-American mayor, W.R. Grace, first rose to prominence as a resident and businessman of Latin America? Our very own @markricehistory.bsky.social has written about it.

We are pleased to host Dr. Sara Rahnama of Morgan State University for a Globus Seminar lecture on her new book, The Future is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria.

Join us Thurs 4/10, 12:30-2pm in NVC 5-160, followed by light refreshments in the History Department.

Happy to see that my review of John Soluri's book, Creatures of Fashion, was published in The Americas. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Careers for History Majors. Join our workshop to discover different paths where you can use your research, critical thinking, and communication skills. Turn your passion for history into a career! Thursday, February 27th at 4:30-5:30pm. In-person, Newman Vertical Campus 2-190.

What can you do with a history degree? Quite a lot actually! Join us on February 27.

Season 3, Episode 7: Seneca Village Gotham Center Podcasts · Episode

Listen:

🎧Alexander Manevitz speaks about the free black community Seneca Village on Gotham Center Podcasts: open.spotify.com/episode/3k8R...

🎧T.J. Desch-Obi on the Glocal Citizens podcast on studying the endangered martial arts traditions of the African diaspora: open.spotify.com/episode/43qp...

Fighting for Honor A groundbreaking investigation into the migration of martial arts techniques across continents and centuriesThe presence of African influence and tradition in the Americas has long bee…

Read:

📙Desch-Obi's Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Art Traditions in the Atlantic World uscpress.com/Fighting-for...

📙Manevitz's “A Great Injustice: Urban Capitalism and the Limits of Freedom in 19th-Century NYC” (Journal of Urban History) journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

February is Black History Month! Here are some reading & listening suggestions featuring Baruch College history faculty T.J. Desch-Obi and Alexander Manevitz, whose research areas delve into Black history in NYC and around the world.

Recommendations below ⬇️

At a deluxe dining room on the 100th floor, a chef toils in obscurity. In New York, private restaurants in luxury towers are a popular amenity. The public cannot eat there, and residents only drop in occaionally.

Photo of Professor Vince DiGirolamo

Private restaurants in residential buildings were popular during an earlier period that parallels the extraordinary wealth and inequality in New York City of today: the late 1800s and early 1900s, known as the Gilded Age. The Dakota, one of the city’s first luxury apartment buildings, had a private dining room. So did the Ansonia, which also featured a fountain in the lobby with actual baby seals. “When the luxury apartment buildings became a trend in the 1880s, they were seen as suspect and déclassé compared to having a brownstone,” said Vincent DiGirolamo, an associate professor of history at Baruch College. The exclusive dining rooms were part of what helped establish the buildings’ allure in a city that back then had a thriving elite class, even as two-thirds of the rest of the population crowded into tenements.

Recently, Baruch College history professor and expert on the US Gilded Age, Vincent DiGirolamo, was interviewed by @nytimes.com on the resurgence of private dining rooms for New York's luxury towers. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/n...

Well, well, well...looks like the "people trained to read, evaluate material for accuracy, and write well" are proving to be extra important at their workplaces today. #HistoryCareers

Dear students: We apologize for some delays in printing out class materials this week. Our department copier has experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Four Baruch History professors will be participating at this year's @historians.org annual meeting. Don't miss out on these exciting panels and discussions. #AHA25

If you're attending the @historians.org and CLAH annual meeting in a few days in New York, check out our panel.

historians:

Faculty research spotlight! This week, Baruch history prof. @zoegriffith.bsky.social will be presenting at Stanford Univ.'s Abbasi Annual Conference: The Sarrafs: Money, State, and Finance Dealers in the Ottoman Empire (1700-1900)

Hello new Bluesky arrivals! We're a history department educating the next generation of New Yorkers while punching a bit above our weight with our research and and publications. Follow us for announcements about department events, people, and accomplishments!

A faculty member wearing a suffragist Halloween costume and a student pose in a gathering in the history department.

Students and faculty chat in small groups in the history department office with platters of baked goods in the foreground.

Two students pose in front of spiderweb decorations at gathering in the history department.

A professor wearing black academic regalia with orange stripes, tiger ears, and orange sunglasses, poses with a student in a white lab coat and blue scrubs at a Halloween gathering in the history department.

Halloween social at the history department! 🎃